There is an
intriguing little story tucked into the middle of C. S. Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Lucy finds herself in the upstairs room of an
old magician’s house, pouring over an ancient book of spells. Within its pages, she is drawn so deeply into
beautiful pictures of herself, that she becomes captivated in her own vanity. Lucy turns the dusty pages of the book
further and discovers the opportunity to listen to her friend’s opinions of herself. The conversation is so vivid Lucy has a hard
time remembering what is actually real.
Her heart is so overwhelmed with disappointment that it spills out in a
tear trickling down the page, before Aslan the Lion appears with a gentle growl
and the urging to stop eavesdropping.
I heard the
gentle roar of the Lion New Year’s Eve, while driving in my car to a friend’s
house. I was sitting at a stoplight,
when I asked myself a simple question, “What is most troubling my soul?” I’d love to tell you that I was deeply
burdened over the tragedies of our current events, concerned about matters of
social justice, or simply wanting to love my neighbor. I had been carrying around an ache in my soul
for about a month, like a meal eagerly consumed in haste, now sitting like a
rock in my stomach.
The ugly
truth: I was consumed by how many people
had not responded to my recent Facebook post.
I have a
bachelor’s and master’s degree in Information Media. I recently finished writing my doctoral
dissertation about social media use. My
Facebook friends helped me complete my 18 weeks of training for a 5k, helped
raise money for clean drinking water in Africa, and have been an audience of
readers for my blog.
But,
I had
stopped looking through my newsfeed, unable to take in one more picture of
another person’s success without feeling like I was losing at life. I had deemed Facebook, The Daily Disappointment, chronically discouraged that my pictures
of shoes, clothes, and daily antidotes received so much attention while the
posts about things I care so deeply about were continually ignored. My mind was such a buzz, wondering what
clever thing I should say next to gain more attention, having to resist the
urge to constantly check my phone to see if my thoughts were validated with
enough “likes.” I found myself in a continual
state of distracted thinking. I missed
the pleasures of deep thought, and wondered if I could actually read a whole
book or if my attention span had been severely amputated to Twitter’s 140
character limits.
How many
times had I snuck my phone off with me to the bathroom just so I could continue
to check it? I was addicted. I was reaching for human connection and
significance, both good things, but I was struggling to find them in a stream
of pictures and texts. I was attempting
to medicate my loneliness by inhailing a fog of social media haze.
So, about a
week ago, I deactivated my personal Facebook account. Call it a New Year’s Resolution, if you will,
I just wanted my soul back. I hope it reduces the amount of noise I have in my
life and increases my focus, inspires me to search for significance in the
right places, and propels me to interact with more people face to face. I hoping to see in 2016 that Lewis’ words
prove true, “Aslan's instructions always work; there are no exceptions.”
Dear Readers, Last week I told you about my friend Steve Wiens and his new book, Beginnings. His guest post is below to tell you more about his manifesto. If you are a reader, I hope you'll give this book a look.
It came to me as a question, but one with a smirk and a wink. It was a delicious question, the kind that invites you to leave Bag End with only a walking stick and a stomach hungry for adventure.
I was stuck, but I was only beginning to realize it, and it was a sickening kind of feeling when I finally did. My life seemed to be drifting away from me, like someone was using a pair of bellows all wrong, extracting breath from me instead of adding it.
The question thundered around me, accompanied by random flashes of lightning, and I was dazzled enough to turn aside to see what it was before it rolled by.
What if the creative act of God described so richly in the Genesis poem was not simply an event in time, but a process that is reflected in all beginnings that follow?
What if new beginnings were lurking around every corner, inside every whisper, and even stitched into every ending? What if they hovered above us, and filled in the fault lines beneath us? What if being stuck wasn’t the inevitable destination?
What if the world, right here and now, is crying out once again, and what if the God who hears is responding, and sending, and moving, and acting?
So I wrote and wrote and wrote, and with three boys under the age of six, it was mostly done by magic tricks and stopping time. The more I wrote, the more I believed. It came in torrents, flooding me, until it didn’t. Then it trickled in: a paragraph, a sentence, a word. But it came all the way out, and I’m about to let it go into the world.
Beginnings is my manifesto of hope, that the creative activity of God is not finished, not even close. Beginnings is my defiant shout that even when we are lost in the inky blackness, there can emerge out of that swampland something glorious, something eternal, something covered in the goodness of God.
What follows are the first words I used to translate the fluttering reality in which I now am grounded. I hope it leaves you hungry for more.
“THE ACHE HAD probably been creeping up on me, but I didn’t notice it until that night, sitting on the deck behind my sub- urban house looking out onto my suburban life. Isaac was two, and the twins were six months old. I was a pastor at a large church, I had been married for fourteen years, and my twenty-year high school reunion had come and gone.
I didn’t go to that reunion. I didn’t have the energy for the awkwardness, the sizing up, and the plastic cups of stale beer to chase down our stale memories.
But the ache that had been whispering through my body rattled to a clumsy stop on that night, in those suburbs, on that deck.
I had been looking at pictures of my friends who went to the reunion: my old girlfriend, the guys I used to go all night skiing with on those blisteringly cold nights in Minnesota, my soccer team. And I remembered all the beginnings.
I remembered moving from Southern California to Belgium the summer before seventh grade. I remembered the sour, un-American body odor of the team of men who moved our old furniture into our new house. That smell was the baptism of our new life in Europe.
I remembered my friend Colin who lived across the street in a two-story white brick house in Waterloo with black shutters, like they all were. I remembered the in-ground trampoline in his back yard, on which we spent hours and hours, jumping our way into adolescence. I remembered his mother’s unbearably loud voice, as it boomed around their house like a grenade and made us run for cover.
I remembered falling treacherously in love with Tammi the moment I saw her, coming down those stairs in the fall of my ninth grade year. She liked me back, and then she didn’t like me. I was devastated. That’s when I started listening to the Cure and Depeche Mode, bands who were created for teenagers like me who don’t know how to express the frightening chaos brewing beneath our skin, bubbling and boiling.
I remembered Mr. Tobin, my tenth grade English teacher. Every student should have a Mr. Tobin. He got to know each of us and selected books based on what he thought we’d like. The first book he gave me was Trinity, by Leon Uris. I remember staying up late into the night reading about Conor Larkin, the main character, who was everything I wanted to be but feared I wasn’t: brave and passionate and rough edged. Almost thirty years have passed since I met Mr. Tobin, and I credit my deep love for reading to his deep love for teaching.
I remembered kissing Angie under a starry summer night on that dock that jutted out into Lake Como, the thrill of that moment reflecting off the lake and making everything luminous that summer before our senior year. I can still see the picture of us at the homecoming game: she was beautiful, holding my hand under the dark October sky. I had a ridiculous acid-washed denim jacket on, with only the bottom button fastened in the chilly air. There was a grin on my face and my eyes were sparkling. I was seventeen.
I remembered driving around in Matt’s Bronco for hours, finishing off the beer that Carl’s older brother bought us. We must have burned hundreds of gallons of gas on those cold winter nights; we were irresponsible, irrepressible and immortal.
I remembered deciding to go to college in a sleepy little town in southern Minnesota, instead of up north, where most of my closest friends from high school had chosen to go. I remembered trying to explain it to them, in the awkward way that high school guys do. I don’t remember much of that summer before college. I only remember the familiar sensation that comes with every new beginning: the thrill of reinventing yourself running parallel with the fear of the unknown—the twin tracks that lead to everything else.
But on that night, on that deck, in those suburbs, the continual forward movement seemed to have stopped. The tracks had run out. I used to be in motion, rattling forward toward a destination that kept morphing. But on that stationary deck, I had become solid and stable, and stuck.
There would be no new beginnings.
My life should have felt full and rich, but instead it felt empty and dark. There was only the slow work of playing out the reality of the decisions that had already come and gone. I was a pastor. I was a father. I was a husband. I didn’t regret any of those things. I loved my kids and my wife and my job. But the finality of it all was a relentless crashing—wave after wave, under those stars, in those suburbs, on that night. It felt vacant, like staring into nothingness.
It was empty and full at the same time. Empty of beginnings, full of endings.
As I sat there motionless with the emptiness closing in around me, there was something else hovering above me in the darkness, but I couldn’t see it.
If I could have seen it, it would have looked like a beginning.”
I think, behind most
good books, lays the story of an enduring friendship. This post is about my friend and pastor Steve
Wiens, who has cheered me and my
writing on since we became friends in 2009.
Steve wrote the foreword to my book and has since written his own called
Beginnings which will come out this Friday. He will guest post next week so you can read
more, but this week, I hope you enjoy the story below.
“I’ll write it out for you!”
I stopped and looked wide-eyed at Steve, wondering where
those words had come from that had just spilled out of my mouth.
It was a Wednesday night and the lobby at church was
swarming with people. I had just finished
telling my story to a room full of junior high students and wasn’t ready to
spill out a summary in the middle of a crowd.
“Maybe not tomorrow, but this weekend, I could write out my
story and send it to you. Would that be
okay?” I nodded along with my
suggestion, trying to convince myself along with Steve that this was, in fact,
a good idea.
We wrapped up our conversation, and as soon as I was out the
door, I turned to my friend Camry and squealed, I think my life just changed!
That wintry night back in 2009 was a beginning.
There are rare moments in life where God allows you to see
people, and, as you look at them, you don’t just see the moment you’re in, but
several moments into the future. You
realize you are connected, even though you’ve just met, and somehow you know
things about the person looking back at you, even though they’ve never been
said.
That night, in the midst of a buzzing church lobby, I looked
at Steve and saw that he was a writer….
….but somehow, I was the one writing.
I went home, opened my laptop, and began to pour out my
soul. I had never committed to paper, or really even said aloud what it was
like to have cerebral palsy, to look down every day at feet that didn’t
match. I had never expressed to another
person besides God how deeply hurt and disappointed I had been that God had
decided not to heal me when I had begged Him day after day. I was just learning how to love God again in
this area of my life, to let some light in, to really trust that He held me in
His hands….
I wrote and wrote and wrote…..my words became an e-mail
attachment that became an article that became…a book.
Writing a gut-wrenching memoir is like subjecting yourself to
a wound being cleaned, being scrubbed over and over again until you are deeply
and fully healed. I remember one August afternoon I was sprawled out on the
floor, exhausted. I had wanted to write
for six hours that day, but by 2 PM, I had fallen well short of my goal, bogged down by the work of carefully revising some of the most painful chapters in my
manuscript. I remember convincing myself
to go back to the computer, to keep typing, and there I found an e-mail from
Steve:
Jenny,
I've been writing a little bit lately. Just writing some essays that may be a
part of a future blog. And I thought of you - and I wanted
to say: Keep writing! Keep
going! You have something to say and people need
to read it! You go girl!
Steve
Steve did go on to write a blog,
and I remember him texting me the morning it went viral. I smiled, because Steve, along with the rest
of the world, was realizing together how good his words were, how much they
needed to be shared. The writer I saw
that night at church was beginning to compose.
I have had several unique opportunities since I finished Walking with Tension in 2014. Joni Eareckson Tada and I both had articles
published side by side in the Bethel Magazine. We had an opportunity to
meet months later and talk about the experiences of grief and disability. This was quite miraculous, seeing as I threw
her book angrily in the trash when I was a teenager.
I got to meet and thank Dr. Victor Anderson, a Dallas Theological
Seminary Professor whose thoughts on friendship and contributions to the book Why
O God have been such a mentor to me in my journey of accepting disability
in my own life and in the lives of others.
The summer my book came out, Victor happened to be preaching alongside
Steve and Northern Pines Camp and it was incredible! I woke up every morning and wanted someone to
pinch me, it was so good. You can hear
it all online.
I’ve been on television,
spoken at two
universities, a few non-profits, and have had several opportunities to sit
across from people who have also been impacted by disability as they share
their stories. I’ve had the occasional
reader come up and thank me in public, sometimes in tears, because, as Steve
tells me, my words have helped people name their vulnerabilities
and move towards wholeness.
Perhaps my
favorite experience, though, as I’ve begun to write, is watching my friendship
with Steve unfold as we cheer each other on in sharing our words with the
world. Steve has written a beautiful
book about creation called Beginnings, which comes out January 1st,
2016. I’ve had the honor of reading this
book in its entirety; what a gem. Steve tells personal stories in a warm and
welcoming way as if he is your next door neighbor. Although I grew up reading
the Bible, I found the way he illustrates stories accessible for me, sometimes
for the first time in my life! There are spiritual practices and questions at
the end that you can ponder on your own or together with friends. It’s a
perfect gift for you or your small group.
I hope you read it soon and enjoy it as much as I did.
Every year as we turn our clocks back and the clouds roll
in, I get sad. Driving at night, I feel
almost as if the darkness is trying to reach into my car windows so it can
devour my soul. Kind of like Harry
Potter’s Dementors, but without form. I
can become withdrawn from humanity, losing my appetite for human contact, and at
the same time, feel desperately lonely.
I’m less motivated: I
want to sleep more, eat more, and cry more. Christmas is not the most wonderful time of
the year; that honor belongs to the month of July. So, since mid-November, I’ve started to make
what I like to call, The Joy List. I’ve tried to notice and remember things
in my life that bring joy. I hope you
enjoy reading mine, and in turn, are inspired to create your own.
Joy is…
The grandpa whose life was saved from what could have been a
fatal freak accident and now gets to spend his golden years with his grandson,
playing cars and trucks on the floor, laughing and holding each other close.
The auntie who visits her niece’s freshmen dorm to deliver
the surprise that’s she’s been secretly saving for her niece’s college
education for years…and the dream she holds to study abroad, the one she had
been praying for that morning, is not only going to be a reality, but it’s
going to be paid in full.
The friend who invites you to dinner, the one who has
already attended her mother and brother’s funerals, has some news to
share. You squeal with delight and embrace
in a hug because she is pregnant!
Joy is eating dinner with friends. Part way in you realize the food is so good,
and you feel so relaxed and at peace, but the real reason you feel at rest is
because of the people sitting with you; they know the real you and love you so
much.
Joy is running into your little nieces and nephew while you
are in town. Everyone lights up and is
so excited. Every time. The littles share their news and their love. There are rounds of hugs and kisses before
everyone goes on their merry ways.
That extra day off you weren’t expecting.
Your second cup of coffee.
Joy is standing in church to sing. You catch the harmony and sing it out
strong. Suddenly your whole body is
participating in expressing what is deep in the soul. Joy is closing your eyes in that moment,
imagining yourself standing before the throne room of God, earnestly pouring it
out, this overflowing expression of gratitude Thank you, thank you, thank you, but in this dream you are standing
there in this cute black and white party dress, with shiny red heels, whole and
complete, but even then, you realize, the thing you want most, is still the
love of God.
Joy is sitting in the living room by the fire.
Joy is watching the sun rise, painting the sky with fiery
pink.
Joy is working hard to pedal up to the top of the hill in
the park, pumping my legs, throwing my back into it, lecturing myself, You can do this, or your name isn’t Jenny
HILL! Come on! Joy is finally reaching
the top and then sailing down it like a little kid.
Joy is giving your friend a second big hug, because the
first big hug just wasn’t enough.
Joy is holding a wee baby, new to the world. Kissing his head and whispering in his ear: You are precious.
Joy is celebrating with your friend who, after many years of
work, has finally published his manifesto.
Joy is wearing pink and feeling pretty.
Joy is dancing around your kitchen to songs that make you
happy.
Joy is discovering the beauty in the person you just met.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy
and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow
with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13
I’m blessed to have people in my life who consistently ask
me, “How can I pray for you?” My answer
lately has been, “You can pray that I would be more loving.”
I find myself wondering from the prescribed lectionary
Advent readings to the familiar words of 1 Corinthians 13, the famous Love Chapter. There I find a menu of things I am:
impatient, envious, boastful, and self-seeking.
I am an accountant, making a meticulous record of wrongs that have been
done to me. My keen memory is fabulous
for the work of a librarian, but cumbersome when it comes to forgiveness.
This idea of agape love that Paul is illustrating in chapter
13 evokes the picture of a love-feast.
As if our lives were a banquet table, all of our love spread out and
available for others to enjoy.
Overflowing amounts of patience, kindness, and goodness to go around,
gobs of protection, trust, and perseverance.
But, so often, my love does not look like a banqueting table. Lately, my love looks more like a food
fight. I want to dip my spoon into the
lime green Jello-O of envy, cock it backwards in a catapult, and fling it!
How do we become more loving?
How do we put down our spoons, putting the ways of childhood
behind us like Paul suggests?
This, I have been pondering, for the better part of a
decade.
We could pray for those who persecute us. (I think I just
shot milk through my nose.) How interesting of David to observe in Psalm 23
that the Lord prepares a table before him in the presence of his enemies, as if
the love feast were especially available when we find it most challenging to
commune with others. I’m learning that prayer for those who persecute us is more
than an act of obedience, more than the “Christian” thing to do. Sometimes the inky black that surrounds our
enemies is more layered, confusing, and dark than our human souls can
handle. In our pursuit to love our
enemies, we must reach out to the Light of World. He is our only hope for a break through.
We could spend time with people who suffer. People who experience overwhelming need have
so much to show us about the sustaining power and friendship of God towards
those He loves. The preciousness of
their lives may motivate us to take an honest look in the mirror, realizing
that we have both a real need and greater capacity for love and compassion in
our hearts. It is what has propelled me
to accept the invitation to take a seat at the Table, simply asking the Father
if I could have a second helping of His never-failing love.
For the past year or so, the name John Stumbo has come
across in conversation. One day he was
running marathons, and the next he was he was lying in the hospital. Unexplained weakness had visited his body, and
for reasons that are unclear, John lost the ability to swallow. His muscles simply stopped working. John has now recovered from his mysterious
illness, but what has taken place in his heart and mind is still
unfolding. He has since written two books, and is now
the president of the Christian
and Missionary Alliance. I will
include his thought-provoking testimony at the bottom at this post if you’re
interested in watching.
I want to leave you with this beautiful essay written by
John about love. It is inspiring and
convicting. I hope you take the time to
read it.
Here is just a preview:
Love is not about “look at me; see what I can
do.” It’s not about how smart I am, how cool I act, how witty I can be, or how
much God has used me. It’s not about how big my ministry is, how many books
I’ve sold, how many books I’ve read, how many likes I get on Facebook, or how
many people like me at all. Love isn’t about how much I’ve sacrificed or how
hard I’ve worked. It’s not about my talents, my interests, my success, my
anything.
Love isn’t primarily about me.
Love is patient with the person who doesn’t
get the point the first or the fifth time.
Love is kind enough to do for another person at any moment what we wish others
were kind enough to do for us.
Love is happy for someone when he or she
succeeds, gets a promotion, a raise, a great vacation, a nicer car, a nicer
home . . . has another child, a happy marriage, good health. Love is happy for
those who are living the dream we can’t seem to attain.
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:2
What is it like to experience peace when you are serving in the military? I asked a veteran I know to write on this topic. He graciously agreed to compose for me, but asked to remain anonymous. I think you will find his words insightful.
I had just arrived in the Kingdom of Bahrain after what
seemed like an infinite flight. I was on my way to the USS ENTERPRISE to join
the crew in the engineering department. It was a bright, sunny morning in the
Middle East but it sure felt like bedtime to me. About 15 other people and I
were waiting in the shade of a tent on a concrete pad with nothing but plain
white buildings and sand in the background. Other than a couple of camels tied
to a fence, it was not a very remarkable place.
I was anxious to find a phone to call my very pregnant wife
who was scheduled to have a C-section with our first child later that week.
Finally the bus arrived to bring us to the processing building where we were assigned
a place to stay and told when we were scheduled to depart for our duty
stations.
When I got to my hotel room, I finally had a chance to call
home. My plan was just to tell her I made it and that I was going to the ship
early the next morning. Turns out she was going to do all the talking. She
answered her cell phone from her hospital bed where she had given birth to our
daughter a few hours earlier. I had missed it by a day! The good news was, both
she and the baby were great and she had friends there to take care of her. The
bad news was, I was at least 6 weeks from getting home to see them.
Getting to a new ship is stressful enough when you’re
focused on the task at hand but having a new baby that you’ve never even seen a
picture of is something that keeps you distracted. My task was to get all of my
qualifications complete while the reactor was critical because when we got
home, we would be shutting down and heading into an overhaul period where I
wouldn’t have a chance to operate the plant at power. My watch station was
titled Propulsion Plant Watch Officer or PPWO. I supervised the controls of two
reactors and the associated engine room.
I also was put in charge of a division of about 20
mechanics. These guys (and ladies) were smart and always wary of a new officer.
And, they all knew WAY more than I did about the ship and how it worked. My
days consisted of ensuring my guys were performing their maintenance checks,
standing appropriate watches, taking logs, and staying out of trouble. When I
wasn’t doing that, I was spending as much time as I could standing my own
watch, under instruction, learning as much as I could. I had about 50
individual tasks I had to perform, dozens and dozens of hours of watch to
stand, a division to run, and an engine room to keep operating – all the while
trying not to get lost on this 1,000 foot floating monster. Just remembering
where to go to eat was a challenge. Normally, these things are all taken in
stride but I couldn’t stop thinking about my small family waiting for me at
home.
Things were not moving as fast as I would have liked.
Nothing moves fast in a nuclear power plant (unless of course they are going
wrong). Weeks were flying by and I wasn’t getting my tasks done
proportionately. I had qualified as the after steering safety officer which
meant any time we were transiting anywhere near land, I was at the bottom of
the ship in a place called “after steering” waiting for a control failure that
would never happen; more importantly, I wasn’t making any progress on my quals.
By the way, it takes FOREVER to transit the Suez Canal at 10 knots. The phone
system availability was spotty and the internet was even worse. I was stressed.
I missed my wife and ached to meet my daughter. The ship was either very hot or
very cold, but always big and unfamiliar. Just finding the stinking bathroom
was a 10 minute evolution that I didn’t have time for. There were over 5,000
people on board who all knew what they were doing except for me. They were
everywhere yet I was alone.
Wait a minute. I wasn’t alone. The Lord put me on that ship
at that time. He sets my challenges and enables me to meet them. He was there
too. What does Ephesians say? Oh yeah, “For He himself is our peace.” Peace!
That sounds good. That’s what I’d been missing. Not because it wasn’t there, it
was; He was. I was so focused on myself, I forgot that God not only provides
peace, He is our peace all the time! I needed to let Him be in control, not me.
I needed to look up.
What a shift. I started to move well through my tasks. I
started to feel confident in the control room. My guys started to get to know
me and trust began to develop. I could find the wardroom, head, engine room and
my stateroom in just under what would be considered a reasonable amount of
time. We were heading home soon – in time for Christmas! I even managed to sing
a few carols while down in the bowels of after steering (don’t worry, it was so
loud down there that no one else had to listen).
We pulled into Norfolk on December 19th. It was a
Wednesday. The folks who had become parents while they were away got to get off
the ship earlier than most. There was a tent setup on the pier where family
members could wait for their sailors. Most were outside, smiling with
anticipation. I looked around and didn’t see any familiar faces. I went inside
the tent and saw the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen in my short life. There
was my dear wife, nursing a baby. She smiled. My little one was mostly covered
with a blanket but her tiny little legs and feet were sticking out one side. I
stopped in my tracks – there are no words for moments like that.
Peace. Sometimes you have to consciously look for it and
sometimes it overwhelms you and your heart swims in it. But it is always there
– He is always there – knocking on the door. I encourage you to open it.
“Rejoice in the Lord
always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The
Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer
and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of
God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus.”
There are unexpected moments of wonder as a teacher when the roles between you and your students are reversed. The students teach you things
at a moment when you least expect it and you suddenly become their student. It
is sublime.
Late one morning I was
standing in my reading well with the kids huddled around me. Sometimes I feel
like a mother hen with her chicks surrounding her nest. We were reading The Growing
Table, a biography of Farmer Will Allen, who wanted to grow food
to feed the world. When I asked the kids how they would describe
him after I had finished reading the story, one of the students raised his hand
and said, "He was smart and he had longing." As the words fell from his lips, I stopped,
so intrigued. "What did you mean?" I asked, giving him a high 5.
"He had longing to make his dream come true."
As I went to lunch later that day, I wondered about Jesus’
statement, Let the little children come
to me…for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these. Kids are so full of wonder and
perspective. Uninhibited, unafraid to
spill fourth what is in their soul.
Children, I am convinced, have something to teach us, and we are wise to
surround ourselves with them, stopping to listen to what they have to say.
The student in my reading well gave me such pause because I
experience a daily dose of L-O-N-G-I-N-G.
“Who thought up this word!?”
I have repeatedly asked my friends, almost angry. “It has the word L-O-N-G in it!”
They shrug, unsure how to respond, not liking its nature
either.
But I can’t get away from this experience of
L-O-N-G-I-N-G. It’s been stretching
itself out in me for months. Every day
around 9:30AM, while I snack on nuts and cheese, and I feel this ache emerge
from my soul. It’s as if someone has
taken their fist, reached into my chest, grabbed hold of my heart with their fingers,
and is now pulling me along in their grasp.
Longing looks in both directions. In one direction, longing stands at a closed
door. Grieving over a beloved past,
unable to enter that time or experience ever again. Longing knocks at the door in vain.
Longing also turns and stretches out its fingers over a new
horizon, open and willing to grab hold of a breathtaking future that is rising
with the sun. They skies are not filled
with tears from this angle, but are bursting forth, highlighting the canvas
with orange and pink.
It’s scary to name the things we are grieving or are
reaching for. We don’t want to say
Hope’s name aloud, because we all know that Hope has an ugly step-sister,
Disappointment. She crowds the
conversation sometimes, endlessly reminiscing about the pain of the past, and
when she is done, you want to stop dreaming, stop feeling. You leave the room, realizing you have
nothing to say to Hope.
But the second grader in my reading well hasn’t meet
Disappointment, or at least, hasn’t learned to listen to her yet. His observation of longing, suggests that it is
essential to moving forward, to being expanded.
“L-O-N-G-I-N-G
is this insightful word that has given feeling to distance. This ache between where
we are and where we want to be. Longing, I realized that day, is the discomfort
that ultimately propels people forward to make change in the world, to make
their dreams a reality. Longing holds hands with hope, and together, their
friendship brings forth our dreams.
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a
longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”
Proverbs 13:12
